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Chlorophilia t1_is1yzjg wrote

Reply to comment by Bear_Wills in Does the salinity of ocean water increase as depth increases? by rhinotomus

This is a good point! Geothermal vents are too localised to be significant, but there is a geothermal heat flux everywhere on the ocean floor (due to heat escaping from the Earth's interior). However, this heat flux is on the order of 0.1W/m^2. By contrast, the heat flux at the ocean surface from the sun is of order 100W/m^2. So for the heat budget of the ocean as a whole, the geothermal heat flux is negligible. Locally, at the ocean floor, it has been argued that the geothermal heat flux could be non-negligible. However, this is not routinely incorporated into ocean or climate models (I will admit that I didn't even know this had been properly looked into before your comment made me look it up!) and, whilst it's possible that it could have some second-order effect, it's orders of magnitude too small to drive the kind of large-scale overturning we see in the modern Atlantic.

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phantasmagorical_owl t1_is28geh wrote

I can't speak for other ocean or climate models, bit geothermal heating is included in NASA's ECCO ocean models and state estimates. Its magnitude is small relative to ocean surface heat fluxes but geothermal heating does help maintain a more realistic deep ocean state by reducing the drift in deep temperatures.

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Chlorophilia t1_is28uwa wrote

> I can't speak for other ocean or climate models, bit geothermal heating is included in NASA's ECCO ocean models and state estimates.

That's good to know! I was not aware of this.

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Aeellron t1_is24aot wrote

Man the facts about the sun just never cease to amaze.

Orders of magnitude more heat introduced than geothermal vents.

As soon as you think about it it makes sense.

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Shaetane t1_is2zdnv wrote

We really aint nothing without our resident well-distanced, well-temperatured, star

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salsashark99 t1_is39c04 wrote

What is the range of salinity of ocean water?

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Chlorophilia t1_is3aa0f wrote

Most of the ocean is between 32-36g/L (so quite a tight range!). You can get more extreme values in some marginal seas, and of course places like lagoons and estuaries.

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Swiss_cake_raul t1_is3xvlq wrote

I actually knew this fact already but reading it written as g/L instead of ppt just made me realize it's the same ratio of salt:water as my sourdough recipe!

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